I’ve always had a hard time reviewing material that involves people I ‘know’ whether in person or e-friends. Such is the case with Rae Amitay,  former co scribe from my Metalreview.com days. Luckily, she has given me so such reason to worry as displayed on Thrawsunbalt’s stunning 2013 release, Wanderer on the Continent of Saplings, on which she drummed. And now she has come from behind the drum kit (though still doing drums for this recording)  to spread her vocal and lyrical wings in her own new project, Immortal Bird.

Joined by John Picillo on bass and Even Berry on guitars and mixed by the mighty Kurt Ballou, the  material on Akrasia is the kind of stuff that Southern Lord would drool over; a brittle,blackened, sludgy, crusty mix of extreme metal styles, but no definitive influence, though her time in Mares of Thrace appears to have rubbed off.  Amitay delivers searing blackened  raspy vocals that would give the likes of Grace Perry (Ex-Landmine Marathon) and Angela Gossow (Arch Enemy) a run for their money, and even adding a few clean croons here and there.

While most of the material on the EP is an impressive, abrasive, crusty assault  of acerbic riffs  and Amitay’s furious rasps (i.e opener the aptly named opener “Spitting Teeth” and neck snapping, thrashing closer “The Pseudoscientist”), the highlights are when she and her companions get a little more abstract  and inject some dark atmospheric menace and foreboding into the caustic cacophony. Whether it’s the quirky  little tangent  about 2 and a half minutes into  “Ashen Scabland”, which transitions into an utterly vitriolic finale or the creepy clean vocals Amitay uses during the foreboding lulls of the otherwise blistering “Akratik Seminar”.

Immortal Bird is a much scarier creature when entering, dark, uncomfortable realms, even with impressive noise mongering at the forefront, but this scorching twenty minute teaser looks to be a great sign of things to come from Amitay and co.

[Visit the band's website]

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